Five things my Mother never taught me.

My last post addressed "Mom Blogs" and my mother's comment nearly turned my "Man Blog" into a "Mom Blog". So I would like to take a moment to write about my own Mother.
In fact I would like to write about Five things my Mother never taught me.

1. My Mother never taught me to backbite.

All of my life watching my mother interact with other people I cannot ever recall hearing my Mother say anything bad about a person behind their back.

2. My Mother never taught me to steal.

When I was a very little boy, I worked a few funny jobs for my mom and collected every bit of loose change that I could find so that I could buy a Stomper. I don't know if anyone remembers stompers but it was a little truck a bit larger than a matchbox car that took a AA battery. The stomper had a switch to turn it on and it would slowly creep across the floor. The stomper's headlights would light up and the stomper usually came with two sets of tires, foam and hard rubber. If I remember right, the stomper usually cost around a dollar twenty.


After scrimping and saving for a period of time the day finally came that I had saved enough change to buy the stomper, I placed the change in a small plastic sandwich bag and asked my mother if we could go to town to buy a stomper. My mother told me that later that day she was going grocery shopping and that we could go then.
I remember waiting and pacing for what seemed like forever until my mother, with a smile said; "Bubba, (that's what my mom calls me)are you ready to go?"
Before she could get an answer I had my bag full of change and was climbing in to our old Ford Torino.
My mother stepped into the car and we took off to the store. Our first stop was Lin's Thriftway. My mother had some grocery shopping to do so I followed her with my change bag in hand as she loaded the cart.
In my stomper excitement I took a little detour and walked passed a shelf with whole peanuts that you could buy by the pound. I loved peanuts and didn't think much about it and decided that I would like to eat one, so I reached up and grabbed a peanut.
As I walked back to my mom, I cracked open one half of the shell and ate one of the delicious peanuts. It was wonderful. When I arrived at my mothers shopping cart, she looked down and said:"Bubba, what is that?" "A peanut," I said. "Bubba, where did you get that? I pointed to the large stash of peanuts. "Did you pay for it?" My mother asked. "No", I said.
"When you take something without paying for it, that is stealing," My mother said. I knew what stealing was, but it was just a single peanut. "But mom, it was just one peanut," I said. "It's still stealing, so you will have to pay for the peanut that you ate." My mother said in a kind voice.
So my mother walked with me to the checkout line peanut shell in hand. She lifted me up to talk to the cashier.
"Tell her what happened David." My mother said.
"I stole a peanut over there and would like to pay for it." I sadly said.
The cashier looked at us kind of funny as I handed her the empty peanut shell, she pushed a couple of buttons on the cash register and said, that will be seven cents.
I slowly reached in to my plastic bag and handed her a nickel and two pennies.
The cashier took it and put the change in the register. I looked down at my bag of money and new I didn't have enough for the stomper.
I told my mom of my concerns hoping she would give me 7 cents. She just smiled, gave me a hug and told me I would just have to save more money.
I felt pretty bad that day but that lesson stuck with me deep for a long time, at least until I was a teenager.
One day as teenagers my older brother and I went shopping with our mom.
We were in high school and a little rowdy to say the least. While shopping with our mother something caught our eye, it was a the dry ice cooler. My brother and I loved dry ice. Not only because it was neat, but because you could make bombs and get into a lot of trouble with it.
As my brother and I walked closer to the dry ice cooler, temptation got the better of us. We walked over to the cooler and opened the door. Steam lifted off the white gold as it beckoned to us to take it. Off to the side were a couple of chips of Dry ice a little smaller than a golf ball. My brother and I couldn't take the temptation so we each reached into the cooler and each took a chip of ice. We shut the cooler about the time my mother was getting the groceries rung up.
We played around with the ice, putting it in our mouths and rolling it on our tongues, pretending we were blowing smoke from a big cigar, burning each other, and just having a good time.
As my Mom walked out of the store we followed her and the bag boy to the car, all the while playing with our new toys of frozen gas.
While the bagger was setting the groceries into the trunk of the car he looked at my mom and said (and I swear these are the exact words): "I don't want to be a narc, but your boys took that dry ice without paying for it."
My mother looked at him and thanked him. She shut the trunk of the car and marched her two teenage boys to the cashier. Almost automatically my older brother looked at the cashier and said: "We took some dry ice without paying for it and would like to pay for it." I followed up with a quiet "yeah."
The cashier looked at us funny as we placed our small dry ice chips on the scale. The total bill was 17 cents. My older brother was kind enough to pay my part of the bill.
I don't remember what was said on the way back to the car, I don't think there were any Ill feelings, and my mom may have possibly called us little shits. But that was that.
We new our mother loved us and expected more from us.
My mother never taught me to steal.

3. My mother never taught me to overlook those have been overlooked.
I have never seen a kinder person to the elderly than my mother. Throughout my life I have watched my mother spend countless hours listening, talking to, and helping the elderly.
Rarely an evening went by at our house that my mother didn't get a phone call from an elderly lady that just needed someone to talk to. She always listened and always genuinely cared about what they had to say. I don't think that we ever had a Thanksgiving or a Christmas dinner that my Mother didn't invite an old widow that lived down the street to eat with us.
I have never seen my Mother belittle anyone no matter who they were, and it's impossible to not feel like a million bucks when you are around her.

4. My Mother never taught me to throw my hands in the air and give up.
When I was younger, the trucking company that my dad worked for went out of business. So my dad did everything he could to provide for us. That meant a lot of hours during the day doing odd jobs and driving a mail route through the evening and all night.
With my Dad gone it left raising four fighting boys to my mother for the majority of the time. Many, Many times my brothers and I would really get out of hand only to find my mother patching things up and really trying her best to help us all be happy. Every night and every morning my Mother made sure that we all as a family took time to pray together. Looking back, I know those times had to be extremely difficult for her but she was always strong and I never saw throw her hands up in the air and give up, when I believe most people would have.

5. My mother never taught me what it was like to not be loved.

In my whole life, there has never been a time that I have wondered if my mother loved me. Growing up and especially in my high school years I was kind of a rascal. I did a lot of things that at the time I didn't think warranted love from anyone. But no matter what I did, no matter what the circumstance, I always knew that my mother loved me.

I just hope that no matter what, my Mother knows that I will always love her.